Artist makes clouds in gallery

For his Nimbus series, Dutch artist Berndnaut Smilde creates clouds in empty gallery settings. They are short-lived, but damned lovely. More images at Smilde's site and you can see a video of the cloud-making over at the Washington Post. (Thanks, Lindsay Winterhalter!)

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i dont get it; it’s a fog machine making a shot of fog. This is art? Dont get me wrong; it is beautiful. But hardly ground breaking; this happens at my local disco every weekend…
- joelogs
  
  It’s actually a real-life cloud–watch the video, its much more impressive and cloud-like than a fog machine.
  - seyo
    
    Read the article: “he carefully regulates the temperature and humidity of the space, ensuring that conditions are perfect. Then, he sprays a short burst from a fog machine” All this is clearly visible in the video.
    
    It’s not a real-life cloud. To do that he’d have to open a window and convince a real life cloud to float in, and so far all attempts at that have been unsuccessful.
    
    The difference between this and fog effects at your favorite disco is precisely the technique he uses to regulate the temperature and humidity in the room. Without which the fog would just spread out and dissipate, looking like it does at any old cheezeball club. Here, he forces the fog to bunch up and form into these cloud like shapes that are so convincingly beautiful.
    - http://northierthanthou.com/ northierthanthou
      
      Thank you. That was well put.
- Shinkuhadoken
  
  Well now, I get low and I get high,
  
  and if I can’t get either, I really try.
  
  Got the wings of heaven on my shoes.
  
  I’m a dancin’ man and I just can’t lose.
- t3kna2007
  
  I think it’s cool. The beauty is the point, and that one’s a pretty good cloud-shape. It reminds me of the clouds I saw while out walking this morning, with daybreak just beginning to color the tops. I hope he does some more under different (darker) lighting conditions.
  
  (Little fluffy clouds: you might still see them in the desert.)
  - Ipo
    
    Were they purple and red and yellow and on fire?
    - t3kna2007
      
      Yes they were, the most beautiful skies as a matter of fact. :)
  - Fred Talmadge
    
    Many of us like nature and have pictures of nature on a walls. This takes a simple element of nature and puts the emphasis on it to again show us how beautiful it really is. Very nice.
- Antinous / Moderator
  
  When did we start getting comments from people who hang out at the local disco every weekend?
- Iain Bryden
  
  disco?
Schmorgluck

In the mean time, online photo hosting services make galleries out of the cloud.
http://artdonovan.typepad.com Art

I love that!!!
http://northierthanthou.com/ northierthanthou

Really cool stuff.
Susan Carley Oliver

Do I lose geek points if I say I saw this on Pinterest like a month ago?
Planet Strike

http://www.we-make-money-not-art.com/archives/2010/09/cloudscapes-by-transsolar-tets.php
- Planet Strike
  
  saw this a while back…
- Planet Strike
  
  http://www.tetsuokondo.jp/project/bnl.html
James B

I was the floating soap foam from helium vented into soapy water. This seems closer (though not that close) to real clouds.
- timquinn
  
  you were?
jwkrk

I’ve looked at clouds from both sides now.
http://www.facebook.com/people/Nader-Nazemi/100003752906014 Nader Nazemi

Very cool !
http://noctilucent-studios.blogspot.com/ Noctilucent Studios

Very, very cool. Real cloud or no. They certainly make for lovely still shots.
http://daniel.friesen.name/ Daniel Friesen

An “artist” puts a puff of fog in the air then takes a photo before it disappears and calls it “art”. A scientist finds a way to keep it there and then calls it “progress”.

On another note. The article says the artist’s statement is “I wanted to make a very clear image, an almost cliché and cartoon like visualisation of having bad luck,”
If this were really the case; Instead of making photographs of rooms with artificial “clouds” in them. Shouldn’t he instead be creating these “clouds” above the head of a person posing before taking a photograph?
Andy Rofl

io9 reported this a few months ago:
http://io9.com/5892356/artist-suspends-real-clouds-in-the-middle-of-the-room